Gonne

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Gonne, Maud 1865-1953. Irish patriot and actress. A leader of the Irish independence movement, she was a founder (1906) of Sinn Fein. William Butler Yeats's play Cathleen ni Houlihan (1892) is based on Gonne's life.

A lovesick Yeatswrote that Maude Gonne had "beauty like a tightened bow", and theold priest who taught us English (and whohad once seen Gonne on a Dublin street) would spend eternities explaining the simile.